The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
September 9, 2007

Proper 18 – C
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Philemon 1-20
Luke 14:25-33

Today, as on every Sunday, we come here both to remember the past and to anticipate the future. And the one thing that is certain is that we must deal with both, with the future as well as the past, with that which is changing and unknown as well as with that which is known.

Today we still enjoy the warmth of summer, but we can be sure that frost and snow are just around the corner. Two or three months ago Wall Street was flying as high as the flag, but today it’s struggling like a fibrillating heart. And the streets of Baghdad and Washington, DC, like Wall Street and lots of other streets around the world, are anxious about what the future will bring.

I became Rector of The Chapel of Our Saviour almost twenty-one years ago. If you were a member of this parish at that time, would you do me a favor and raise your hand? (c. 25%) OK, now how many of you have come to Our Savior since that time? (c. 75%)

My! How things change! Change, as has been observed, is one of the few constants in life. “You can never step into the same river twice,” said the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, because the next time you step into the river it is different water, a different river. Life is like that.

Change is neither bad nor good. It just is. The goodness or badness that accompanies change depends upon what we make of it. Will we take from it life or death, despair or hope, meaninglessness or new meaning?

Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, provided a view on change that I have never forgotten. “Transfiguration,” he said, ”is that which takes place when a person’s present situation, as he himself participates in it, is brought into a larger context, so that his life, and the situation in which he finds himself, take on new meaning.”

“Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me,” Jesus insists, “cannot be my disciple.” In our day, we have made the cross a symbol of religion and service. But that’s not what it was in Jesus’ day. Carrying a cross, in the context of Jesus’ day, was a sign of death, and to carry one’s own cross was to carry the sign of one’s own death. That’s what it meant for Jesus as he carried his cross up the hill to Calvary, and that’s what it meant to the crowds who were listening to Jesus teach in today’s Gospel reading.

There is no change in life more radical than death, and last week we experienced it in the life of this parish. We had the sad task of saying goodbye to one of our own, Father Bob Dunn. One of our own is no longer with us here. There is no change, no situation in life, like it. It is the change that faces every one of us, the overarching context of every life. The mortality rate for human beings remains at 100%. This is the situation we find ourselves in.

But mortality is a context we stow away in the deep corners of life, until something – an airplane crash or the loss of a loved one or friend – forces it once again into our consciousness. Or until Jesus reminds us of it on Sundays (if the preacher will let him). Or until someone gently, even humorously, reminds us of it, as Russell Baker did in a column he wrote in the form of a diary entry for the day: “Out of bed,” was his initial entry for this day. “Legs working O. K. Not like when they were running the quarter-mile in high school, but good enough to carry the whole structure all the way to the pills.”

A larger perspective. Legs not working like they did when they ran the quarter mile in high school, but still good enough to carry the whole structure all the way to the pills. But for how much longer? How much longer will the pills keep death at bay?

For one facing the change of death, euphoria on Wall Street, or tranquility in Baghdad or on Pennsylvania Avenue, provides only temporary relief, only remission, not a cure. For one facing death, neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither the god of the Dow nor the god of the Nasdaq means a blessed thing. Only faith in the Lord of Life means anything.

“Now faith,” the author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This is his wonderful summary of the life and death of Jesus. Jesus simply did not fear the change of death, because his faith in God conquered the fear of death. Jesus knew that if, in this life, he persisted in telling the truth about God, the people would kill him, because the truth was more than they wanted to hear. This was his situation. But with faith in the Lord of Life as his larger context, Jesus chose to persist in the truth even in the face of death, because he believed that to save his physical life at the cost of sparing us the truth would be a fate worse than death, for him as well as for us. So he traveled on to Jerusalem in the face of death, trusting that the God of truth would use his death to give his own life new meaning. With the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen to support him, Jesus gave up his own life for the sake of the world, and on the third day he realized the consequences of his faith.

And that – our mortality, the context of life and death – is the situation in which we find ourselves today, the situation Jesus and Paul speak to us about – about how the life of faith and love, as Jesus lived it, offers hope, the possibility of new meaning, transfigured life, even in the context of death.

That’s the possibility St. Paul offered his fellow Christian Philemon – a new and larger context of faith to consider in this life, with the possibility of eternal life beginning now. For Paul knew before Frederick Buechner said it, that while “we think of eternal life as something that happens when life ends, we would do better to think of it as something that happens when life begins.” So, Philemon,” Paul asked him, ”in the larger context of the fact that Christ died for both you and your slave, Onesimus, are you afraid to change your understanding of Onesimus, or are you ready to receive him and live with him as a brother, rather than as your slave?”

You heard the story. One of Philemon’s slaves, a man named Onesimus, had run away, which, as defined under Roman law, was an offense punishable by death. If Philemon ever caught Onesimus, he had the legal right to brand him, mistreat him, work him to death, literally, even to crucify him, literally.

Well, somehow the runaway slave Onesimus found his way to Rome, where he became a disciple of Jesus, a follower of the Way, and a friend of Paul. But Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon, asking Philemon to receive Onesimus back, not as a disobedient and fugitive slave deserving punishment, but as a brother in Christ. Why did Paul take such a risk with Onesimus’s life? Why didn’t Paul, as an apostle and Philemon’s father in the faith, simply write Philemon and tell Philemon that freeing Onesimus would be the right thing to do? Or why didn’t Paul simply keep Onesimus with him in Rome, which it seems both he and Onesimus would have been happy enough to do?

Paul sent Onesimus back to his owner, Philemon, because the context of life, for both Onesimus and Philemon, had changed. And Paul’s hope was to give Philemon a chance to consider the changed context, so that he might find new meaning, both in his own life and in the life of Onesimus.

Paul had once lived in Philemon’s world, a world of slave and free. He knew the world of Roman law, and he knew that, as a Roman citizen, Philemon might still value Roman law and custom. As a Roman citizen, Philemon lived in a world in which distinctions between Jew and Gentile, between male and female, between slave and free governed everything about the way people lived, a world in which the most important decisions and the most favorable benefits were based on these distinctions, decisions and benefits of law and wealth and property and taxes, of life and death.

In the context of Roman law, to allow a slave to run away and not do anything about it carried economic and social consequences as great in that day as allowing Wall Street and the American economy to go down the tubes today would carry for us. Slavery was a staple of the Roman Empire; three-quarters of the population of the empire were slaves. What would it mean if slaves were allowed simply to run away and not be punished? Onesimus was property, and if Philemon ever got his hands on Onesimus again, he had not only the right, but a duty under the law, to see that Onesimus paid for his actions.

But the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection had changed everything for Paul, and he wanted to share this change with Philemon. Christ had brought a larger context into Paul’s consciousness, the context of the love of God for all men and women, regardless of social and legal distinctions. This new context had led Paul himself to reconsider everything he had thought important in life up to that point. It had given him a new meaning to live for and, if necessary, to die for. Above all else, the slave, like the Gentile, was now seen by Paul as a child of God, a brother or sister for whom Christ had died.

Christ crucified and raised had led Paul to value everyone without distinction – Gentile as well as Jew, slave as well as free, the poor as well as the rich, the sinner as well as the righteous – because he now saw them as Christ sees them, not as persons all marked up with distinctions of one kind or another, not as possible economic assets, but as brothers and sisters of Christ himself, redeemed children of God.

Paul wanted to help Philemon see this new context as well. So Paul writes Philemon and asks him if he’s ready to consider this new perspective in his own life. “Once to every man comes the moment to decide, Philemon. Are you ready now to stop living with Roman law as your master and to start living as a man of grace who has been redeemed by Jesus on the Cross? Are you ready to receive Onesimus back, not as your slave, which is your right under the law, but as your beloved brother, which is your possibility by the grace of Christ’s redeeming love for you? So I write you, Philemon, and send Onesimus back to you, appealing not to your duty under the law, but appealing to your love instead.”

“You have a choice, Philemon. In the world you live in, you have a right to punish Onesimus, even to kill him. You have a right to continue to use every breath he draws to earn you more money. And the world would understand and support you, even applaud you. Law and order, and all that. And you also have an opportunity to receive Onesimus back and forgive him as Christ has received you back and forgiven you, and to live with him as your brother rather than as your chattel. What does life in Christ mean to you, Philemon? Onesimus’s life as well as your own. It’s your choice. It’s your future. It’s your meaning.”

Transfiguration – that which takes place when a person’s present situation, as he himself participates in it, is brought into a larger context, so that his life, and the situation in which he finds himself, take on new meaning. Philemon was offered the possibility of transfiguration – a new meaning, a new understanding of life. Would he choose life, or death? Not only for Onesimus, but also for himself?

“We would do better to think of eternal life as something that happens when life begins.” That’s the truth and the faith Paul is offering Philemon. But we’re not talking about an hour a week on Sunday when the weather’s just right and a ten-percent tithe after taxes. We’re talking about death and life, about death now and new life beginning now, not only for our slaves, but for ourselves. We’re talking about faith and love and the Cross, Jesus’ Cross and ours, Jesus’ faith and ours.

In the situation we find ourselves in, in the context of our mortality, the only possible good news is change, the only possible good news is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, the assurance of transfiguration.

With Father Dunn last Saturday – not for him, but with him – we prayed for life, for his life and ours, “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who rose victorious from the dead, and comforts us with the blessed hope of everlasting life. For to your faithful people, O Lord, [we are assured that, in Christ,] “life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.”

But Paul’s letter to Philemon tells us that the context of our hope is even larger still, because we need not wait until the death of this mortal body to choose life. Because it’s not just a question of what we believe about life after death, but a question as well, for us as it was for Philemon, of the life or the death we choose to begin now. We don’t have to wait for the power of the pills to run out in order to choose transfiguration, resurrection, and life. This is St. Paul’s offer to Philemon and to us this morning: consider the new meaning for the life we already have, beginning right now.

That’s what the Cross, Jesus’ dying for the world, Jesus’ dying for you and me and everyone else, offers us – a different context, a wider perspective on life, so that our lives and the situations in which we find ourselves, take on new meaning now. “Jesus set Onesimus free, Philemon. Will you honor that freedom by dying to your own rights?” And if St. Paul were to write us a letter today, asking us to let go of our rights or prejudices or preconceptions or expectations about life for the sake of another’s freedom in Christ, what right, what prejudice or familiar view of life, would he ask you to die to for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of your brother or sister in Christ? That’s the Gospel challenge for us today?

Change, if not feared, can offer new life even in the midst of the old and familiar. It can offer a new perspective, a way of seeing one who was once your slave as your brother. It can offer a new way of seeing a friend, or even our enemies, from the transfigured perspective of Jesus, who died for them as much as he did for us.

A college student being interviewed a few years ago about the possibility of a U.S. intervention in Afghanistan said, “There’s nothing worth dying for.” Which means that in the end, unless she experiences a conversion, she faces the unhappy prospect of dying for nothing. And there are no pills that can save her from that. Only taking up our own cross, only faith in God and his providence, can do it.

The only people God raises from the dead, as Robert Capon reminds us, are dead people. In short, Christ has come for us. Because, whether we admit it or not – and how hard it is to admit! – we are all born to die. The only question, ultimately, is how and for what? The only question is whether we will die and live. Which is simply another way of asking how, and for what, are we prepared to live? Are we prepared for a life lived for others in love? For a life full of meaning? Or for nothing? We can choose now which piper to pay, life or death? That is the truth St. Paul puts to Philemon this morning, and to us.

I know that many of us here are in excellent shape now: great jobs, wonderful children, splendid retirement benefits, the world at your feet. Can’t imagine even heartburn, much less hypertension or senility. But life isn’t done with you yet. Life, this mortal life, will, in the end, cost every one of us everything we’ve got.

And that bad news is, in the words of Jesus, very good news, because “everything you’ve got” just happens to be the exact cost of discipleship, the exact cost of following him into the kingdom and life. Like Philemon, we already have everything it takes for Jesus to cut us in on his deal. All it costs is one life, and, fortunately, one life is exactly what each of us has got. And the choice is yours. The future is yours. The meaning is yours, beginning today.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.